


where there's a will

by aloneintherain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Gallows Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not a death fic, The Golden Trio, Trauma, teenagers dealing with the possibility of their own deaths, will making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 16:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12391806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aloneintherain/pseuds/aloneintherain
Summary: Harry writes the first draft of his will when he’s fourteen.





	where there's a will

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a death fic. I want to make that very clear. This is a fic exploring trauma, how unsafe Harry’s environment was for pretty much the entirety of canon, but there is no character death.
> 
> I’m also 19yo and used google and the Actual Adults around me to clarify some things about will making, but then again, I am writing about wizards (bureaucratically backwards wizards, at that). There’s a lot of hand waving when it comes to laws in here, I know. Work with me here.
> 
> Warnings for anxiety, emetophobia, and some mentions of blood. If there's anything else I missed, let me know.

 

Harry writes the first draft of his will when he’s fourteen.

It takes facing a dragon for him realise that he could die here, at Hogwarts. It isn’t the face fixed on the back of Quirrel’s head, or the basilisk, or the dementors. It isn’t even Cedric’s body cooling in the muddy grass, or Voldemort running his fingers down Harry’s burning face—it’s the lead up to the First Task. It’s a semicircle of adults insisting he participate in the Triwizard Tournament, and then whispering about the fatality of the competition to one another behind their hands. It’s the almost-adult seventh years stooping down to whisper, _We’ll lay flowers beside the fat lady, Potter,_ and the mean laughter, and Hermione’s pinched face as she looks at him over the Gryffindor table, like she’s memorising every detail, just in case. It’s Ron’s silence. It’s the dragons bucking against their chains, and Hagrid laughing and clapping, while Harry tries not to throw up.

It’s nothing new, and that’s what sticks in his mind like a stone: this has happened before. Harry’s a fast learner. He’s known his entire life that no one would be there to catch him if he fell. Hogwarts has been un-teaching him skin-deep lessons—that food and beds and friendly, non-violent touches belong to everyone, even him—but not this. Hogwarts reminds him, in every snide laugh, in every person that eyes him with butter-soft eyes and thinks he doesn’t hear when they whisper about how he might not make it, that he’s alone in this.

It doesn’t hurt. Harry pushes it down, and keeps his eyes forward.

But it does stick. After he faces the dragon, after the adrenaline leaves him in a rush, and even the most enthusiastic well-wishers have let go of him, Harry sits on the edge of his bed and looks at his invisibility cloak stashed in his trunk, its silvery hem poking out beneath a bundle of socks.

“You alright, mate?” Ron asks from the opposite bed. The party continues downstairs, but Ron is here, oddly subdued.

“Fine,” Harry says, and he means it, mostly. “It’s just …”

“Just … ?”

Harry almost drops the issue. He wets his lips, and looks over his open trunk and Hedwig’s cage empty by the window sill. “Can muggles inherit magical items? If a wizard relative dies, can they—” Ron blinks at him. Harry scrubs a hand over his face. “Nevermind.”

They go to sleep, and the next morning, as Hermione is loading eggs onto Harry’s plate, Ron asks, “Can muggles inherit magical stuff? I mean, there’s the Statute of Secrecy, but that doesn’t really apply to muggle relatives, does it?”

Hermione blinks at him. She stops shovelling eggs onto Harry’s plate long enough for him to push his plate away. Ron notices, and spears several sausages from the platter, depositing them on Harry’s plate next to Hermione’s mountain of eggs. Ron usually only pushes food at him after the summer holidays, right after Harry has come back from the Dursleys.

“I don’t know,” Hermione says thoughtfully, looking at Ron with an unreadable expression. “It’d probably depend on the item, and the closeness of the muggle relative. I doubt anyone’s muggle great-grandchildren are going to inherit something like a wand.”

“But other stuff,” Ron says. “Owls?”

“I don’t think owls classify as magical. I wonder if wizard owls are different to muggles ones. They’re trained, sure, but I have to wonder, are they necessarily magical—?”

Harry pushes his scrambled eggs around with a fork. “So they could, then?”

“I’ll look into it,” Hermione promises, and then: “You should really eat something, Harry. You didn’t eat yesterday.”

“You didn’t eat yesterday?” Ron asks, this side of too sharp.

“Nerves,” says Harry. Ron and Hermione stare at him, and he sighs, and finally starts in on his eggs and sausages.

Hogwarts thaws out after the first task. The halls aren’t so hostile. Maybe seeing him face on a dragon and come out bleeding but whole convinced some of them that Harry had what it takes to be a champion. Maybe the fun of it wore off. Dudley and his friends would always give up eventually—either Harry ran too fast, or Petunia called them in for lunch, or their arms got tired, or they got bored of the little hurt sounds Harry would make when they hit him.

Ron and Hermione disappear before the second task, and Harry finds them chained at the bottom of the lake, their faces warped by sickly green light. He can’t leave them there. Viktor takes Hermione, and Cedric takes Cho, but no one comes for Fleur’s sister. Harry can’t leave her. Help will come for those at Hogwarts—it comes in the form of hats helping a twelve year old fight a monster, and tight-lipped professors who pretend that everything is under control, and Harry, who knows that the danger is real, who knows some people can’t take on monsters by themselves, who won’t leave someone else to drown.

When he’s walking back to Hogwarts between Ron and Hermione, students passing them and bellowing congratulations and taunts in random intervals, Harry says, “Would you look after Hedwig for me?”

“Is something wrong?” Hermione asks.

“No, she’s fine. We’re fine.” Harry runs a hand through his half-dry hair. It’s sticking up in the back, brittle with salt. “But if something did happen, would you take care of her for me?”

“Harry,” Hermione starts in that careful tone of hers, “nothing’s going to—”

“Fine,” Harry says, harsher than he needs to, but his chest is burning from the lake water he choked down, and adrenaline crashes leave him impatient. “Ron?”

“Uh,” Ron says.

“Harry, you’re doing so well with these tasks. Professor Dumbledore wouldn’t let something happen. You don’t need to—”

“Sure,” Ron says. “Always wanted an owl.”

“Ron!”

“Thanks,” Harry says.

Hermione sighs. They’re at the shifting staircases, and up ahead, the portrait hole is wide open. The party has already started, music spilling out into the corridor.

“I looked into muggle-wizard inheritance,” she admits, “but I didn’t find anything concrete. I’m going to keep looking.”

“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry says, in a low voice, before the Weasley twins step out of the portrait hole, hoist Harry into the air, and carry him into the common room.

 

* * *

 

 

“I went digging, and I’m sorry, but I think muggles can inherit low-level magical items,” Hermione says. The common room is half empty, and they’re sequestered in a dim corner, their heads bent together. No one spares them a second glance. They’ve been doing this since they were eleven.

“Owls?” Harry asks.

Hermione bites at her lip. “Owls. Books so long as they aren’t aggressively charmed. Even robes.”

“We wouldn’t let anyone take Hedwig,” Ron tells him.

“We wouldn’t have a choice,” Hermione says. “Muggles don’t qualify for the bulk of inheritances—they aren’t even entitled to Galleons and magical property—but in extreme circumstances, when there aren’t any other blood relatives … ”

“Fuck that,” Ron says.

“You know the importance the wizarding world place on blood, Ron. Even under muggle laws, if someone doesn’t have a will and you’re not a blood relative, or related by marriage or adoption, you’re not entitled to anything.”

Ron’s brow wrinkles. “Then what happens to everything? If the muggles can’t get it, and they won’t hand it over to anyone actually worthwhile like his best mates, then what happens to it all?”

“Like his Gringotts vault? It would legally belong to the Ministry. They’d decide what to do with it, but again, with no blood relatives or guardians, they’re likely to keep it. Spend it, probably.”

“How old?” Harry says abruptly. Hermione and Ron look at him, and Harry stares back. “How old do I need to be to make a will, Hermione?”

“Seventeen,” Hermione says. She tugs a thickset book onto her lap, and quickly flicks through the pages marked with sticky-notes.

“I’ll hide it,” Ron says. “I’ll shove all your stuff under my bed and sneak it out of Hogwarts. We can charm Hegwig black, so no one recognises her, and say all your stuff was stolen.”

“Stolen?” Harry asks.

“By the Slytherins. And while they’re busy interrogating Malfoy, Hermione and me will sneak it all out under the cloak.”

Hermione jerks up in her seat and throws the book onto the coffee table in front of them with a heavy thud. “There! ‘A wizard or witch must be seventeen summers, or the patriarch or matriarch of a noble house.’” At Ron and Harry’s silence, she continues, “As the last surviving wizard, you’re the head of the Potter family, Harry. You’re entitled to a will.”

Something in Harry’s stomach stirs. It’s a strange mix between relief and old, sour anxiety. “Do you know how to authenticate it?”

“Your magic will do that. Focus on the intent and the emotion when you write, and when it’s time, I’ll teach you the spell to seal it.”

“Can I have your firebolt?” Ron asks. Hermione whacks him with a roll of parchment.

“Sure,” Harry says, and Hermione smacks him, too. She doesn’t realise Harry is serious.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry is bent over his parchment at breakfast. There is tomato sauce stained in the upper left corner. He isn’t concerned; this is a rough draft.

Several people have asked, in a blandly curious kind of way, what he is doing. Ron had said, “Tournament stuff,” but that made people crowd in, peering to get a look, so Hermione snapped, “Potions homework,” whenever people looked at Harry too closely, and that succeeded in driving them away.

“Hermione,” Harry asks abruptly, “what’s your middle name?”

“Jean,” Hermione says.

Harry writes something down. “What’s yours, Ron?”

Ron’s ears go pink. “Do you have to know?”

“Do you want my firebolt or not?”

“… Billius.”

Hermione chokes on her pumpkin juice, spilling it down her front, and Harry starts hiccuping with laughter. Ron’s ears darken into a tomato red. “Oh, fuck off!”

“ _Billius_.”

“I said fuck off, Harry!”

 

* * *

 

 

“The wording doesn’t have to be too precise,” Hermione says, pushing the parchment back at Harry when he tries to show it to her. “The magic makes sure it’s legally binding, and I don’t think anyone would try and find loopholes to get a hold of your things. No offence, Harry, but you don’t own anything big enough to be worried about that.”

“My stuff is important,” Harry says, indignantly.

“I never said it wasn’t. I just meant you don’t need me to check it over. This is private.”

She instructs him through the authentication process. Ron watches on. Fourteen year olds aren’t legal witnesses, but witnesses aren’t compulsory when there are magical bindings are in place.

Harry recites the spell. The air goes thick and balmy, and then his whole body is being crushed by an invisible weight. He feels a bit like he’s been dropped into a fireplace, and a bit like he’s stuck at the bottom of the lake again. And then it fades, and Harry can breathe properly.

“You did so well, Harry,” Hermione says.

Harry swallows, his throat dry. “Thanks.”

Ron prods him. “Better?”

Harry looks down at his authenticated will. The ink on the parchment shines iridescent in the torchlight. If anything happens, his things will be safe. “Yeah,” Harry says. “Loads.”

 

* * *

 

 

Harry wonders, later, if he knew that something terrible was coming. He’s thought about his own death in a practical and logical way before, but to craft a will barely a month before Voldemort’s resurrection is a whole new kind of luck.

Pettigrew slices his arm open, and shakily recites the blood ritual. Harry squints out at the fog-hazy graveyard. He can’t look at the gurgling caldron or, beyond that, at Cedric. He can’t.

Sirius can go to the park, Harry thinks instead, sucking in sharp gasps. He could stand beneath the near-summer sun for as long as he liked. The invisibility cloak will get Sirius out of the house.

The bundle of skin-muscle-bone shrieks as it’s remade, and Harry squeezes his eyes shut. His scar burns like a brand.

He thinks about Ron on his firebolt, jittering and excited at Quidditch try-outs next year. He wonders if Hagrid will re-frame the photos of his parents. Maybe he’ll hang them somewhere nice. By the window, maybe.

Voldemort stands on his own feet for the first time in 13 years, and the image of his parents’ photo, eternally twirling beneath a spray of autumn leaves, hanging somewhere sunny in Hagrid’s hut, is lost. The Death Eater’s appear in bursts. They laugh as Harry twitches on the ground, an animal scream tearing up his throat. No one is coming. Not for him. Not for Cedric.

The graveyard grass is wet with old rain, torn up by Harry’s sneakers. He doesn’t notice until later, when he’s in the hospital wing, looking at the mud smeared up his arms. There’s blood, too, ground into the groves of his palms. It takes him a long minute to realise that the blood is his, not Cedric’s.

Cedric hadn't bled.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry doesn’t remember the days after Cedric’s death.

He keeps losing time. He’s in class, and his mind fuzzes with static, and when he next looks up, he sees the Great Hall, not Flitwick’s classroom. Ron loads Harry’s plate up. Harry doesn’t pick up his fork. Hermione urges him to eat something, anything, but looks strained when he nibbles at a bread roll.

“Hermione,” Harry says, voice rough. He hasn’t spoken for hours. Ron and Hermione watch him like he’s going to break, and chase away anyone that ventures too close with that tell-tale spark in their eyes, which is good, because if anyone else asks what happened to Cedric, he thinks he’ll open his mouth to tell them to piss off, and his stomach will fall out through his lips.

“Yes?” Hermione asks.

“Can you take it?” He lowers his voice. “My will. It’ll be safe with you.”

“If you’re sure,” Hermione says. “We should meet up this summer. I’ll talk to my parents.”

“My mum will want you at ours first thing,” Ron says. “You know what she’s like. We won’t let you stay with those muggles long.”

Something in Harry’s chest unclenches, just a little bit. The Burrow. That’s still there. He thinks about summer days spent crouched between thickets of wildflowers, un-gnoming the gardens, and games of backyard quidditch. Even Ron’s furiously orange room with a sloping ceiling and a creaky camp bed helps to chase away the static in Harry’s head.

“Okay,” Harry says. He picks up his fork. He doesn’t taste the mashed potatoes, but scoops up a forkful, and then another, and another, until it’s all gone.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry’s things look wrong at Privet Drive. They don’t belong there.

Harry dreams about Cedric’s abrupt, wordless death and the damp grass pressed against his nose when he twisted under the Curse. When he wakes, sweaty and nauseous, the first thing he sees is Hegwig, locked in her cage, looking back at him evenly, and then his Transfiguration textbook abandoned on the bedside table. Harry pictures Dudley bruising Hegwig in his grip. He imagines Uncle Vernon burning his books like he had his Hogwarts letters. He sees Aunt Petunia, wearing rubber gloves, stuffing his robes into garbage bags to toss away in the public tip.

Harry squeezes his eyes shut and recites, _I give to Sirius Black my invisibility cloak. I give to Hermione Jean Granger my school books and my owl, Hegwig. I give to Ronald Billius Wealsey my firebolt. I give to Rubeus Hagrid my family photographs._

Harry goes over the contents of his will three times, until he feels less like screaming and he stops picturing Uncle Vernon ripping up pictures of Lily and James. Harry doesn’t go back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

“Sirius,” Harry asks, “do you know if my parents left me anything? I mean, besides my Gringotts vault.”

They could move this discussion into the sitting room, but there’s something intensely private about sitting on the stairs. Mrs. Wealsey is still in the kitchen, compulsively washing out the cabinets. Harry doesn’t blame her; cleaning doesn’t make him feel better, but if it did, if it unfurled the knot in his chest long enough for him to breathe properly, he would never put down the sponge.

“You own Godric’s Hollow,” Sirius says.

“I do?”

“Are you surprised?”

Harry squints at the murky green tapestry opposite the stairs, and thinks about this. A house—what should have been his childhood home—that belongs to him.

“I knew we must’ve lived somewhere,” Harry says, “but I guess I always thought of that place as … dying with them.”

“It did, in a way. It’s half-destroyed, but it still belongs to you.”

“Shit,” Harry says.

Sirius doesn’t scold him for his language. He knocks their shoulders together. “You don’t need to do anything with it. No one’s going to take it from you.”

“Would you like it? Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask—can you own property while you’re on the run? Could you legally inherit something, or would the Ministry take it from you?”

Sirius settles a hand on the juncture between Harry’s neck and shoulder. “What is this about?”

Harry hasn’t mentioned the will to anyone else. The adults would think it was a morbid bid for attention, and his classmates wouldn’t understand. But he looks at Sirius, who’s lost everything once before, and says, “I wrote a will.”

“Fuck,” Sirius says. “Harry.”

“I left you my invisibility cloak,” Harry says, because he thinks it’ll make Sirius smile, remembering his own adventures under the cloak with his dad, thinking of all the ways he could use it again, but Sirius frowns at him.

“I don’t want your invisibility cloak, Harry.” Sirius’s hand is still on his shoulder. It squeezes, and Harry sways under the touch, like the warm breadth of his godfather’s hand has given him heatstroke. “I want you to be safe. And alive.”

Harry swallows. “Could the Ministry stop you from receiving property? If I leave the invisibility cloak to you, and then they take it—”

“We won’t let anything happen to you, Harry.”

“I’ve never been to Godric’s Hollow, but the idea of it in _their_ hands is just—I couldn’t handle that, Sirius.”

Sirius sighs and lets go of Harry. In the kitchen, Mrs. Weasley drops a pan on the ground, and the sound reverberates up the stairs.

“I don’t know,” Sirius says, “but the others might. I’ll ask around.”

“Don’t tell them. Please. They wouldn’t understand.”

Sirius scrubs a hand through his hair. It’s clean and freshly cut, hanging in waves around his face, but in that moment, he looks so much older than thirty-five. Sirius understands Harry in the way nobody else can.

“I won’t,” Sirius says.

 

* * *

 

 

The photo of the original Order is stuffed away in his trunk, but Harry can’t get it out of his head. The beaming people that would soon turn traitor, or be tortured into insanity, or killed in their own homes …

Harry thinks of everyone smiling and chatting around the dining table downstairs. He thinks of Mrs. Weasley’s boggart, twisting into the dead, sprawled forms of Ron, the twins, Mr. Wealsey, _Harry_.

His body is heavy and tight—it feels like the Second Task again, like he’s being dragged below the surface of the Great Lake, his lungs filling with briny lake water.

 

* * *

 

 

Hermione tries to give the will back on the train.

“You keep it,” Harry tells her.

“But Harry—”

“If something happens, they might go through my things. They might even pretend that it didn’t exist. You need to have it so you can show it to the right person if they try and seize my stuff.”

“Maybe somewhere like Gringotts—” Hermione begins.

Harry is acutely aware of Ginny, Neville, and Luna in their compartment, peering curiously at the folded parchment in Hermione’s hand. “I trust you,” he cuts her off.

Hermione tucks the will back into a side compartment in her trunk and places a handful of protective and concealing spells on it. Harry watches rapturously. At the sight of his will, something in his chest twists and calms in tandem, and he doesn’t know why.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a ring around Harry at the Gryffindor table, a clear circumference of space that only Ron and Hermione dare to fill. Ginny and Neville sometimes drop into the chair next to him, an almost challenging look on their faces, and Harry wonders when sitting down to eat breakfast become an act of bravery or rebellion.

 

* * *

 

 

_Harry,_

_I’ve been talking with the others, and I don’t think someone in my situation can receive property—at least not through official channels. The Ministry would probably confiscate and hide it away somewhere in their underground rabbit tunnels (I swear, things go in there and don’t come out). You’re better off giving the cloak to someone else. Your friends, maybe? And for GH, may I suggest Remus?_

_I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to make these decisions._

_— Snuffles_

 

* * *

 

 

The first will, he realises, is full of errors. Harry is so stupid—he should’ve known that there was no way the Ministry would read, _To my godfather, Sirius Black,_ and then cheerily hand anything over to the escaped criminal. Or worse, they would have declared Harry insane for listing a convicted mass-murderer in his will, and the entire document would, therefore, be invalidated. They might do that anyway; most of the wizarding world already thinks he’s either disturbed, or lying, or both.

Harry shows the letter to Ron and Hermione. To their credit, they only look mildly surprised that Harry had told an adult about the will.

Harry hasn’t been talking to Ron and Hermione much this year, by his own design. Every time he sits down to talk to them, to anyone, the knot in his chest gets tighter and tighter, until it snaps like a rubber band, rebounding to hurt anyone in spitting distance.

He doesn’t feel like that right now, though. Harry thinks it might be the will; talking about it quiets the noise in his head a little. Sometimes he compulsively recites the contents when he’s stressed.

“I need to scrap the old will and make a new copy,” Harry says. “I need it more than ever with Voldemort back, but the Ministry might just end up dismissing it. When it comes to me, they don’t seem to care about laws.”

Ron’s eyes flicker to the bandage on Harry’s hand, something very hard in his eyes. “We’ll nick your things. Remember that old plan? We’ll tell them the Slytherins did it.”

“They wouldn’t believe that,” Hermione says.

“Fine. We’ll tell them the younger years from Harry’s fanclub stole it all. You know, for a momento”

“Regardless, Harry, you should still try,” Hermione says.

“Leave the backup plan to us,” Ron agrees.

Harry passes the evening working on the draft for his second will. It’s harder than he thought it would be, dividing the important stuff between Ron and Hermione. He doesn’t want to give everything to only one of them, but then again, Hermione hates quidditch and he doesn’t want to think about what she would do with the Marauders Map as a prefect and, inevitably, Head Girl.

“Would you want my books?” Harry asks Hermione. “I gave them to you last time without thinking, ‘cause I didn’t like the idea of the Durlseys burning them all, but there’s no point in you having two copies of everything.”

“Why don’t you donate them to Hogwarts?” Hermione asks.

Harry nods, and scribbles that down. Then he pauses. Looks up at them.

“My invisibility cloak,” he begins, slowly. “There’s no way I can give it to two people, can I?”

Hermione chews at her bottom lip. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t use to sneak into the girls’ locker room,” Harry tells Ron. “Or get sloshed in the Three Broomsticks.”

Ron considers this for a moment, but Hermione cuts in, “Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He couldn’t.”

“I could,” Ron says, defensively.

“You’d get the invisibility cloak if Harry was dead.” It’s strange to hear the thing they’ve been avoiding saying outright around for hours. For the past twelve months. “I doubt you’d be up for perving on anyone with your best friend dead.”

“Maybe he deals with grief by being a sleeze,” Harry says, trying to lighten the mood.

But Ron’s not smiling. He’s wearing the face Harry sees when he comes back from detentions; when their classmates start parroting articles from the Prophet; when Harry wakes screaming in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat, and sees Ron staring at him from the opposite bed.

“Give me the map,” Ron says. “Give Hermione the cloak.”

“We’ll share it,” Hermione promises, and her eyes are noticeably wet. Ron and Harry pretend not to see. “Keep each other safe.”

Harry nods, and scribbles that down. The rest of the will is hard to write, too. He clenches his fists. His bandaged hand aches. Harry wishes he could just give everything to Sirius.

He finishes the will the following night, with enough time to magically seal it under Ron and Hermione’s steady gazes, before he has to go to Umbridge’s office for detention.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’ve noticed, Harry,” Hermione says at breakfast. “You’re always so tense, like a muggle wind-up toy, and then there’s the diminished appetite and the weight loss, the social withdrawal, the panic attacks—”

“You _told_ her?” Harry hisses at Ron. He’s been successful in keeping some of the other things from them, like the random nosebleed he got last week in the library, but Ron has walked in on more than one panic attack. Neville, too. “I trusted you!”

Ron raises his hand defensively, and Hermione says pointedly, “Not to mention the angry outbursts.”

“Yeah, that’s really weird. It’s not like I have anything to be angry about.”

“Is increased sarcasm a sign?” Ron asks Hermione in a low voice.

Hermione ignores him. “They’re all physical symptoms of stress, Harry. It’s worrying.”

“I don’t need you to tell me I’m stressed,” Harry says, standing abruptly. His plate remains untouched. “I think I worked that one out for myself, thanks.”

A few days later, Harry scoffs down his dinner in a rush. He doesn’t have much time these days, and his homework has been piling up. OWL-prep is leaving all the fifth years stressed, and none of them have detentions that run from five o’clock to after midnight every other night, on top of leading an illegal DADA class. He needs this time to get a jumpstart on his schoolwork.

Harry doesn’t make it to the library. He ends up in the bathroom on his knees, retching. He barely registers Ron entering and locking the bathroom. He starts violently when Ron touches his back.

“It’s just me, mate,” Ron murmurs.

Harry opens his mouth to say something, but his stomach twists, and he bends back over the toilet, choking. Ron rubs circles into Harry’s shoulder blades, the same way he did when they were twelve, and Harry threw up Mrs. Weasley’s cooking after weeks of living on tap water and canned soup.

Harry tries to choke out a, “ _Sorry_ ”, but it comes out garbled and more desperate than he’d like.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ron says. “This the first time you’ve thrown up?”

Ron looks at him, searching, and Harry clears his throat, and says, “Been feeling sick, but this is the first time I actually puked.”

“Anything else?”

Harry shrugs. The bathroom tiles are cold and sharp against his bony knees. At least there’s no Moaning Myrtle shrieking at them from above. His mouth tastes foul, and there’s too much saliva there, pooling under his tongue like a warning bell. Harry hunches over and throws up again. It’s just bile, this time.

“Headaches,” Harry finally says into the silence. His throat hurts. Ron keeps rubbing steady circles into his back. When Harry was ill as a kid, and Aunt Petunia would lock him in the laundry loo while she took care of a healthier Dudley upstairs, he would dream of this, someone crouched beside him, patiently rubbing at his back while he puked.

“And?”

“Chest pain. Lightheadedness, sometimes. Nosebleeds, once or twice.”

“Shit.”

The anger is easier to stomach than the anxiety and, beneath that, lurking there like a fungus, the fear and hurt. Harry spits into the toilet, and says, “They’ll figure out Voldemort is really back soon. Then they’ll see.”

Harry’s shivering, and he doesn’t know if it’s the cold bathroom, or the exhaustion from throwing up, or a fever. Ron doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t leave. He keeps rubbing circles into Harry’s back until Harry gets up, washes his mouth out, and goes off to detention.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry funnels the anxiety and anger into the DA. It gives Harry some sense of control. It makes him feel, finally, like he’s doing something productive, rather than sitting around, waiting for Voldemort to hunt him down.

There’s a war coming. They have so much to learn—offensive magic; defensive spells; how to not fall to pieces in an emergency; how to look what could be your death in the face and keep moving forward.

The DA is practising immobilising hexes, lighting up the practise room in bursts of red and gold, when Harry considers teaching them how to create a will. Some of them are seventeen, or approaching it. If he’s teaching them to protect themselves, shouldn’t he teach them to protect their property, too?

Dennis shoves his hand into the air to flag Harry down, almost whacking George in the face. His eyes are big, and the grip on his wand is loose, like no one has ever ripped it out of his hands before, and Harry knows he’ll never broach that subject with the DA. They’re in trouble, but they’re not _Harry_ ; they’re not in the same immediate danger. Someone would protect them. And if Harry has to be that person, has to personally ensure none of these kids ever have to make a will while they’re still students, then so be it.

 

* * *

 

 

“Harry,” Luna says, “you’ve got blood on you, do you realise?”

Harry looks down. His hand, where its shoved into his trouser pocket, has soaked through the bandage. There’s a growing dark spot on his grey trousers and, he realises, blotches on his button up. It would look harmless—like Harry has dribbled soup down his front at lunch, or had a quill pot leak through his pocket—if it wasn’t red.

Harry pulls his hand out of his pocket. The bandage—strips of an old t-shirt—is drenched. Luna riffles through her bag, and pulls out a purple bandana. She hands it to him with a faint smile.

“Are you sure?” Harry asks.

“Oh, yes. I have plenty of headbands.”

Harry unties the bandage. The cuts bleed sluggishly, no longer coagulating the way they used it, when he first started these detentions. He can’t make out the words beneath all the blood. Harry wraps the bandana around his palm and fastens it into a knot.

Luna mutters a few cleaning spells, and the spots fade to an off brown. “I use them on mud stains,” she says. “I guess they’re not as effective on blood.”

“Thanks,” Harry says. He keeps his hand out of his pocket, and away from his body, so he doesn’t leak on his clothes again. “What were you saying before, about face-eating bears in Australia?”

“Drop bears,” she says idly. She reaches out and takes his good hand, lacing their fingers together. Her hand is small and dry, and Harry holds onto it harder than he should, like he’s grasping onto the edge of the desk during detention with Umbridge. “They don’t just eat faces, Harry; they’ll devour your whole head.”

 

* * *

 

 

After twelve months of blood quills and whispers following Harry as he ghosts through Hogwarts corridors, of the Wizarding World shoving their fingers into their ears and pretending there’s not a war at their doorstep, the Ministry wakes to find Voldemort standing before them, whole and terrible and very much alive.

Harry can’t appreciate the way Fudge gapes. He’s leant against a wall, shaking so violently he can barely stand upright. He feels like, with one wrong move, he’ll shatter into a million unfixable pieces.

He takes the portkey to Dumbledore’s office, and he’s not coherent, he’s trembling and shouting louder than he’s ever shouted in his life. He wants it to all _stop_ , he’s had enough of this, he wants _out_ , he doesn’t want to be the Boy Who Lived anymore, he doesn’t want to ever be in that position again, watching his friends and family in fatal danger, or writhing on the stone floors, wordless with the pain, and wishing someone would have mercy and _kill him_ —

And then Dumbledore sits Harry down and tells him about the prophecy. The drowning grief compresses into a dense knot that settles behind his ribcage. All that’s left is the loss and the dull realisation that this, the pain and the grief and the entire war, is burnt into him as intimately as his scar. There’s no out. No flashing exit sign. Not for Harry.

 

* * *

 

 

Now that the _Prophet_ believes Voldemort is back, they’re obsessed with Harry in an entirely different way. They call him “ _a lone voice of truth_.” They praise him, say things like “ _he was perceived as unbalanced, yet never wavered in his story_ ”, and Harry barely registers any of it. At the beginning of the year, the thought that, one day, everyone would know he was right had kept him going. But now, Harry isn’t vindicated. He’s just tired.

Ron and Hermione are angrier than Harry is. Their righteous tirades on his behalf about the _Prophet_ and the Ministry would be more appreciated if they weren’t delivered from their beds in the hospital wing.

Harry doesn’t tell them about the prophecy. He doesn’t tell anyone.

 

* * *

 

 

At the beginning of their sixth year, Hermione pulls them into an empty corridor. “I’ve been thinking,” she says, “about your will.”

Harry stiffens. “I’m not getting rid of it, Hermione. I don’t give a toss how morbid people might think it is.”

“That’s not what I meant, Harry. I helped you make it, didn’t I?”

“Don’t get defensive on us again, mate,” Ron says. “We know how tough last year was for you, but pushing us away only made things worse.”

Harry exhales roughly “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, giving him a wane smile. “I just—I want to make one. A will, I mean.”

“What?”

“Me, too,” Ron says. “I don’t have much, and most of it would’ve just gone to my family anyway, but, well …”

“You-Know-Who is back, and we need to be realistic,” Hermione says. “We’ll be seventeen soon.”

Harry glares out the window. Summer has only just begun to melt into spring, and the grounds are sun-soaked and flourishing. It looks like it does every September. It doesn't look like a world on the precipice of war.

“You shouldn’t have to make that choice,” Harry says.

“You shouldn’t have had to either,” Ron says, louder than Harry expected. “You were fourteen; we’re almost legal.”

Harry remembers how it had felt last year, when everyone was trying to coddle him. He can’t be that person.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, and says, “How can I help?”

 

* * *

 

 

Ron pushes his eggs around at breakfast. Harry prods him with the blunt edge of his knife, and asks, “Alright there?”

Hermione looks at them over her porridge, eyebrows furrowing when she takes in Ron, playing with his scrambled eggs rather than shovelling them into his mouth.

“Yeah, it’s just,” Ron begins, rolling out his shoulders, “aren’t funerals supposed to be really, you know, expensive?”

Hermione puts her spoon down. “Yes, actually. I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

“I gave my Gringotts vault to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley,” Harry says. “Well, most of it. I left Remus some, too.”

“Mate,” Ron says.

“If something happens to you, your family is supposed to get your money.” Harry shrugs, suddenly fascinated with his half-eaten breakfast. “I’m just making sure mine does.”

“Guys, don’t throw me a big fancy funeral,” Ron says in a light tone. “If I die, just dig a really big hole in the backyard.”

“I’ll put the biggest stick I can find on top of it.”

Seamus slides into the seat next to Harry, grinning. “Why’s Ron dying? Got detention with Snape again?”

Hermione hasn’t picked her spoon back up. She doesn’t look hungry anymore. Ron, however, is back to shovelling his breakfast into his open mouth.

Harry gives Seamus a close-lipped smile. “Something like that.”

 

* * *

 

 

On the way to Transfiguration, flanked by Ron and a subdued Hermione, Harry checks the hallway is mostly empty and says, “We’d probably have a joint one anyway.”

“What?” Ron asks.

It isn’t that Harry wants to bring it back up again, but he can’t let this go. For all that Harry is staying out of the turbulent mess that is Hermione-Ron-Lavender, he has to interfere here.

“A joint funeral,” Harry says. “You think if something happened to you, I wouldn’t be right there, taken out at the same time?

“A joint funeral,” Ron says, slowly sounding out the words.

“I would be right there, as well,” Hermione says. She seems to have regained some of her colour. “We’d go down together.”

“A joint funeral,” Ron says again, and nods decisively. “Okay. A joint one.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Holy shit!” Jimmy Peakes says. The locker room goes quiet. “Ron, what happened?”

Ron pulls his shirt on in a rush, but they all catch a glimpse of the fat lines roping down his forearms and shoulders. Some of the scars are faint, and others are a dark and sudden pink. Harry’s stomach swoops. He recognises those injuries from the attack at the Ministry last year.

“Nothing,” Ron mumbles.

Ritchie Cootie stares at him with a new appreciation. “Looked like a pretty big nothing. Did you lose a fight with the giant squid?”

“Leave him alone,” Harry interrupts in his best captain voice. It usually work when they’re in the air, but here, they look right through him.

“Was it … ” Ritchie drops his voice. “Did a Death Eater give them to you?”

Ron shrugs. “Something like that.”

The younger boys looks at him with a newfound awe, and Ron looks torn between being pleased at the attention and being sick

The news works its way through Hogwarts fairly quickly. That night, Ron drops into the armchair next to Harry and stares into the flickering fire.

“People keep coming up to me,” Ron starts, “and asking about the scars. Some of them even want to see it. First time Lavender saw them she got all weird—cooing and all that.” Ron rubs a hand over his chest, and winces, like the wounds are fresh and still hurt him. “It’s so bloody weird. That night was probably the scariest of my whole life, but people keep trying to talk to me about it like it was a quidditch match. Like I don’t—” Ron stops, and then looks at Harry. He realises who he’s talking to, and continues, “Like I don’t still have nightmares about it.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “It sucks, doesn’t it?”

Ron looks at him, understanding, and says, “It does.”

 

* * *

 

 

The will doesn’t matter during the war. If they die, all their things will be lost, or burnt, or scavenged. Harry doesn’t care, anyway. He won’t need his books or his robes again. Hegwig is dead. And he’d trade all of it—his broom, his invisibility cloak, even the ravaged house in Godric’s Hollow, his almost-childhood home—if the people he cared about could be safe.

It helps, sometimes, to draft it in his head, though. They’ve been struggling to form plans with the little information they have, but this Harry can make a decision on, even if no one would obey the directions left on it. Sitting in the pre-dawn forest, sifting through the contents of his will—it’s calming. He doesn’t know if it’s the reminder of the people and the things he still has, or the reminder that it might still be okay, even if Harry doesn’t make it.

 

* * *

 

 

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Ron says, one hand fisted in his shirt. The horcrux is a fat lump inches above that, right over his heart. “Your family—”

“My family is _here_ ,” Harry blurts. He sucks in a sharp breath, and then another, and runs a hand through the long tangles of his hair. “Fuck! I’m terrified for everyone else too, but I’m too busy being scared about—about—”

“About us,” Hermione finishes in a small voice.

“About how to end this.”

“Well, you’re not doing a very good job of that at the moment,” Ron says.

Harry’s words hang, swollen, between them: _My family is here; my family is here; my family is_ here.

“My mum,” Ron begins. The hand curled in his shirt shifts, until it’s pressed against his heart. “My whole bloody family are Order members. They’re out there, fighting, and we’re just camping—”

Ron’s eyes go hazy and unfocussed, and his mouth keeps moving, and Hermione shouts at him, “Take the locket off, Ron! _Take it off.”_

Harry realises that he had said, essentially, _You’re my family,_ and neither of them had said it back. There’s a war going on; it’s such a petty concern, that almost-rejection, but it stays in Harry’s chest, growing like moss over his ribs.

Harry tells him to go. Ron tugs the locket off and throws it at Hermione. He pauses, and then pulls a crumpled roll of parchment out from the bottom of his rucksack and shoves that at her too, before he charges out of the tent and into the black forest.

Hermione hurls both of the objects at the ground, and chases after him. Alone, now, Harry picks them up. The locket is warm, like it’s been sitting in the summer sun. He opens the parchment. The first line reads, _Last will and testament of Ronald B. Weasley._

Harry scans the parchment. Most of the people listed are Wealseys—Ron gives his chocolate frog card collection to Charlie, and any money left to Mr. and Mrs. Wealsey—but Harry finds his name there, too.

_I give to Harry J. Potter my deluminator, so it can bring him light when I’m not there, and remind him to keep going, even in dark times._

Harry sits down right there, in the middle of the tent, the horcrux and Ron’s will scrunched in his hands. Hermione’s cries for Ron to come back echo through the trees and the thin lining of the tent.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry almost drowns, and Ron saves him. They destroy the locket, and Hermione almost destroys Ron, and later that morning, when they’re sat together on the camper beds, Ron clears his throat, and says, “You still got my will?”

“It’s a bit crumbled, but yeah.”

“Good.” They lapse into silence. Hermione is on watch at the front of the tent, working Ron back into her own will. Harry hadn’t realised she had been furious enough to take him out of it. “What I said … ”

“It wasn’t you.”

Ron shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You said you we were your family, and that you were scared for us, and then I just left. I didn’t even realise exactly what you said until I was already gone.”

Harry fiddles with the stolen wand, rolling it between his fingers. The energy radiating from it isn’t malicious, but it isn’t kind. “It’s fine.”

“No, listen—I was scared out of my mind for you both the whole time I was gone. And it was worse than before, when I was worried about everyone else, because, well … I belong _here_ , looking out for the two of you.”

“With your family,” Hermione says from the entrance of the tent, and they both startle. She crosses her arms, but her eyes are butter soft. “With us.”

Ron clears his throat. “Yeah. With family.

 

* * *

 

 

The shock leaves him numb, and Harry isn’t sure why; he’s been preparing to die since he was fourteen years old.

Being realistic about the possibility of his death was hard back then, but knowing with cold certainty that he is to die before sunrise is a completely different kind of beast. As Harry walks into the forest, he recites his will over and over again until it feels like a wonky lullaby.

Harry dies, and then he stands back up, and ends it all. Ron and Hermione are dirt-streaked and nearly feral, pushing through the crowds to reach him. They crush together, clutching at each other’s clothes, more a death-grip than a hug. Then everyone follows, Ginny, Neville, Luna, McGongall, Kingsley—everyone crushing in together, shouting and grasping the bodies pushed in around them, crying with the exhaustion and near painful relief of it all.

Harry’s tattered will remains tucked away in Hermione’s bottomless bag, unneeded and unused.

 

* * *

 

 

_The last will and testament of Harry James Potter._

_I give to Ronald Billius Wealsey ~~my firebolt~~ , any and all quidditch memorabilia I possess at the time of my passing and ~~the marauders map~~ Number 12 Grimmauld Place, to do with as he chooses._

_I give to Hermione Jean Granger ~~my books and my owl, Hedwig, in the hopes that she care for her in my place. If Hermione Jean Granger is unwilling or unable to care for my owl, then she shall pass to Ronald Billius Weasley.~~ my invisibility cloak, in the hopes that it protect both her and her friends._

_To Rubeus Hagrid I return the photographs of my parents, in thanks for giving me the small piece of my family I otherwise would never have had, and in the hopes that he frame them somewhere nice._

~~_I give to my godfather, Sirius Black, my invisibility cloak, so he may see the sun once again._ ~~

~~_I give to Remus John Lupin the Potter cottage in Godric’s Hollow. The management or alteration of the property is left to his discretion. I also leave Number 12 Grimmauld Place to do with as he desires._ ~~

_I donate my school books and robes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

_I give to Edward Remus Lupin the marauders map and the Potter cottage in Godric’s Hollow, a place that should have been a welcoming home to myself and to the Lupins. The management or alteration of the property is left to his discretion._

_The exact division of Gringotts vault should be as follows: a quarter sum to ~~Remus John Lupin~~ Edward Remus Lupin; ~~a three-quarter sum to Arthur and Molly Weasley;~~ a quarter sum to Arthur and Molly Weasley; a quarter sum to Ronald Billius Wealsey; a quarter sum to Hermione Jean Granger. If Ronald Billius Wealsey is killed within 6 months of my passing, money from my vault shall be used to pay all funeral expenses._

_Signed_

_Harry James Potter_

 

**Author's Note:**

> The last will is a rough copy that Harry wrote when he is roughly 17yo, almost 18yo. It will probably change as he grows up, and especially if/when he marries, but for now, this is where he’s at. Why does Harry draft another will, post-war? Because there are Death Eaters still at large and he’s a target, but also: he’s absolutely going to be paranoid after the war.
> 
> Some explanations for the changes in the will: Ron wasn’t given the map because he is no longer a Hogwarts student, and Teddy is the last kid of a marauder. Teddy also got the Potter cottage because, in Harry’s mind, it would have been a place of refuge for the Potters and the marauders (+ their families). Also, he doesn’t currently have much of a connection to it, but really doesn’t want to give the Ministry the excuse to create a Potter museum there. 
> 
> I changed the Gringotts vault divisions, because originally, Harry intended three quarters of the money to help the Weasley household, but now, most of them are adults, so they don’t need to support their kids anymore and Harry can give the money to Ron (and Hermione) outright. 
> 
> And, finally, the last note about Ron’s funeral expenses will be on every copy of Harry’s will, regardless of how wealthy Ron ends up, because the discussions they had at Hogwarts stuck with Harry.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> [My tumblr](http://captainkirkk.tumblr.com/)


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